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August 27, 2005

The Reads in front of Johns Hopkins Glacier.

Johns Hopkins glacier from a distance.   

Johns Hopkins glacier is 250 feet high above the water, and another 200 feet deep below water. It is one mile wide and 12 miles long. The glacier is advancing at a rate of about 11 feet per day. From a distance, you can see a little glimpse of its 12 mile length. As you get closer, all you can see is its huge, mile-wide and 250 foot high face. It is an advancing, actively calving glacier, and hundreds of seals live in the water and on the ice in front of the glacier.

A huge glacial waterfall.

Calpurnia in front of Johns Hopkins glacier.

The captain of Spirit of '98 cruise ship, of the Cruise West cruise line, took some pictures of us while we were in the inlet together, then he burned them on to a CD and left them for us at the Ranger Station. Thanks, Captain Dave Yurman!

Seals, checking out the tourists. There were hundreds of them "sunning" on the icebergs in front of the glacier. If you look at some of the wider views, they look like mud spots, but they are really Harbor Seals.

Below, a snowstorm is brewing in the mountains facing Johns Hopkins.

As Amy gazed into the snow storm brewing atop the mountain.  It occurred to her, that just perhaps, it was time to start heading back south.  Their was great "concern" that we would be trapped for the winter in Juneau.

This would be our most Northern point reached in our cruise.  It was late in the season, to be this far north and still have plans of heading south.  From this Glacier it was another 80 miles south just to get out of the National Park.  We would have our pick of places to anchor, because their was no one else here!

Johns Hopkins is an advancing glacier, which means it is calving, or dumping ice, into the ocean. Here you can see some huge chunks of ice falling into the water.

Lamplugh Glacier was the first glacier we saw. It is about 150 feet tall, with another 20 feet or so below the water. It is three-quarters of a mile wide and 16 miles long. It is advancing at a rate of 3 feet per day.

An icy arch atop Lamplugh Glacier.

The jagged ice field on top of Lamplugh.

Some views of the landscape in Glacier Bay. 

Snow has started to fall on the hill tops while it rains on us below.  This is but another sign that summer has come to a close and the short Autumn season, measured in weeks, is upon us.    The leaves on the trees have turned yellow and red, many have just given up and dropped their leaves altogether.  There exists a flower called "fireweed".  It is called this because it is one of the first plants to establish itself after a forest fire.  The locals say that when the flower has shed all of its petals starting at the bottom and working towards the top, summer is over.  As we look for this flower, all we are able to see are the stalks which have been bare for some time.  Many have also turned to yellow and red, this would be pretty if you were not aware of the meaning behind it.

It is time to leave and start heading south for Seattle.  The low pressure systems which bring gale force winds are coming with more frequency and closer together. As we listen to the weather radio for weather forecasts, it becomes difficult to tell which low pressure system they are referring to.  We count as many as 4 systems heading our way during the same week.  Amy wants to know whatever happened to the high pressure systems between the low systems.  Our prayer is for northwest winds blowing 15 - 20 knots per hour with 3 - 4 foot seas.  What we are getting is 20 - 35 knots and 6 - 8 foot seas from the southeast.  These conditions, if they persist, will require us to spend many days holed up in a cove along the way waiting, praying for the weather to turn.

August 20-31, 2005

Our stay in Glacier Bay National Park was long and beautiful. So, we have split up this section into multiple entries.

This post covers August 20-27, which includes Bartlett Cove (Park Headquarters)

The next post covers:

• Lamplugh Glacier.
• Johns Hopkins Glacier.
• Margerie Glacier and Reid Glacier.  (Pics not added yet)
• Riggs Glacier and Marble Island.  (Pics not added yet)

A view of the very nice lodge at Glacier Bay.

We were very surprised at the level of civilization that exists at this seemingly remote National Park. We were expecting, as Mark says, "two teepees and a park ranger." Instead, we found a beautiful lodge with a restaurant, gift shop and exhibits, including three movies daily. They have rooms, cabins and campsites on the property, as well as a few walking trails and kayak rentals. Again, we agreed that there would be worse places to be stranded (see story below).

Sunset in Bartlett Cove.

Just before arriving in Bartlett Cove, we had a diesel leak in the engine compartment. So, we towed Calpurnia to Bartlett Cove (Park Headquarters) with the dinghy, traveling at 3 knots. We arrived on Saturday night, called our friend in Juneau who had helped us with our engine problems there, and had a wonderful dinner at the lodge. We then spent the next six days anchored in Bartlett Cove, waiting for the new diesel fuel line to arrive. It was coming from Massachusetts, so it took a while to get to Gustavus, Alaska! Once it arrived, Mark had it installed within a few hours, and we were ready to explore Glacier Bay the next day. 

While we waited for the part, we enjoyed the amenities of the Lodge and had one or two nice sunsets.

Good times dining out on the boat in Bartlett Cove.

Thanks to a leaking raw water pump, we spent 15 days in Juneau, many more than we had expected to. While we were there, Juneau experienced a heat wave. The temperature hit an all-time high of 91 degrees at one point. The locals acted as if this was the end of times.  The local newspaper showed a picture on the front page of kids swimming in the Mendenhall Glacier lake.  It was a pretty neat picture of kids swimming with a tidal glacier behind them.  Most of our days there were great weather.

We stayed in Douglas Harbor, which is across the water from Juneau, which means to go to Juneau, you need to take a city bus. Luckily, the buses were cheap and convenient. $1.50 per adult, and they departed every half hour from the Douglas post office, which was about a five minute walk from the harbor. We twice took our laundry in to town and went grocery shopping a couple of times. All of us got to know the bus system very well! Mark took the bus several times in to Mendenhall valley to attempt to work on the part that we needed to fix, and Amy went to the valley to do some shopping for Robert, who is out-growing his 12 month clothes and needs some warm p.j.'s and new shoes.

When in town we highly recommend going to the Juneau downtown library.  It is a new library with a large area of kids books.  They also have a lot of PC's to connect to the internet and the also have WiFi, so bring your laptop.  One night I needed to find something on the net, but the library had already closed.  I discovered that they leave their net on around the clock, so I was able to climb the exterior fire escape stairs up to the forth floor and access the WiFi connection there sitting on the steps.  It gave me 5 bars of strength.

Each day 5 huge cruise ships arrive and then depart the downtown area.  It is amazing to see 20,000 tourist scream into town and leave within 8 hours, feeling like they have gotten to know the town.  Several locals told me that Saturdays are the best time to head into town because there are fewer cruise ships there.  The town has built up a huge shopping area for the tourist to deposit their money.  One person told me that the cruise ship company's owned many of the shops, there buy expanding the opportunities to get more of your money. 

No locals shopped in those areas.  The place to be was at the Juneau Fred Meyer super store.  It had beat out K Mart, forcing them to close.  Walmart was going to move into the K Mart store until they learned there is a structural problems with the site.  For now, Fred Meyers is the place to shop, the city bus makes a special stop at their door stop.

We were in Juneau over the weekend waiting for the part to arrive, so we took the bus (again) to the Mendenhall Glacier in the Tongass National Forest. The bus actually stops 1.5 miles away from the glacier park, so we walked the 1.5 miles to the park, and then walked to a look-out point to see the glacier and also walked a trail that allowed us to see salmon swimming up the creek, which was fun.

Finally we fixed the boat and set out for Glacier Bay.

A drunken sailor on watch after a long day of exploring Tracy Arm.

Robert was so good all day. The weather was cold, but he braved it out with us when he wasn't down below napping. Since Mark was at the helm and Amy was at the bow watching for bergie bits, Robert spent most of his day in his car seat. Finally, at the end of the day, all he could do was pass out.

 Calpurnia, anchored with several other boats in "No Name Cove" after journeying up Tracy Arm.

The next morning Amy took the dinghy out to do some exploring in the "No Name" cove we had anchored in during the night.  During the dark hours, several house size ice bergs had floated into the cove.  Amy took the dinghy for a closer inspection, and returned to state that Robert and Mark should head out to see for themselves.

Donning fleece, rubber boots, sunglasses and life vest, Amy ventures out.

As part of Robert's education, we used a small piece of floating ice to teach him what "cold" felt like.  Earlier in the week he had learned what hot was when he accidentally touched the top of a halogen lamp.  Ouch !!!  Robert decided that the ice was much better to lick than to touch.  After each lick he would stick out his tongue in approval.

Icebergs in Tracy Arm.

The ice at the base of the glacier has this deep blue color.  The ice is under so much pressure that all the oxygen is squeezed out of the ice.  This results in a prism effect in which all light is absorbed except the blue spectrum.

Notice in the lower right hand corner "Sojourn," a huge charter yacht from Orca Sailing and Yacht Charters .  The vessel is making its way through the bergie bits, small pieces of the glacier which have broken or calved off.  Click on the hyperlink to learn more about the vessel.  There are some great pictures of the inside of the vessel.  We ran into the boat several more times during our trip in Alaska, they are very friendly people.

The yacht in the picture at left, "Sojourn," is 130 feet long and is still over 1/2 mile away from the face of the glacier.  This gives you a perspective of how large the glacier is.

More blue ice on the icebergs which have fallen from the glacier.

Several people from "Sojurn" took inflatable kayaks out to get closer to the ice.  It appeared they got within 1/4 mile of the ice.  The significant danger is that when house size chunks of glacier fall into the water, they create waves which are over 30 feet tall.  This would easily swamp the kayaks.  The water was 47 degrees, in this temperature you would loose your ability to move in 5 to 10 minutes and be dead in 40 minutes.  They had a motorized dinghy circling around to assist if anyone got into trouble, but I would think the 13 foot dinghy would have the same trouble in a large wave as the kayaks.

Each iceberg is unique in its shape, size, and texture. These icebergs are probably the size of a house, and you can see on the photo below the interesting texture this one has.

At left, the entrance to Tracy Arm, where the Sawyer Glaciers are located. We anchored here in Wood Spit, which provided excellent holding and was well protected from southeast winds. We shared this anchorage with another boat, "Jeanne-Pierre", which was a 45' Beneteau, very similar to our own. The next day, they allowed us to follow them through the maze of ice approaching the glaciers.

To the right,  shows our journey toward Tracy Arm. The green buoy is being pulled over in a 4 knot ebb tide against us, which we were fighting with our 6 knot engine.  The resulting 2 knots of forward progress makes for slow going.  Notice the two salmon jumping out of the water.

Above and at right: our traveling companion, Jeanne-Pierre, motoring through the fiords cut out by glaciers.

Whale tails along the way to Juneau.

Amy at the helm. Co-captain: Robert. with storm and fog building behind them.

We followed this fisherman out of Petersburg for about 8 hours.  I finally put up both sails, with the wind building to 20 knots I quickly pulled away from him.  The fog eventually over took him.

Robert at play in his room.  His books are lined up on a shelf on the side of the bed.  The shelf is the perfect height for him to be able to pull him self up and "shop" for the perfect bed time book.

Mountains with first sight of snow in very distance.

Above, a flying salmon... below, storm clouds approaching.

The route to Petersburg, Alaska.

There are 65 buoys and navigational warnings on the Wrangell Narrows.  Careful attention must be paid to stay within the green and red lanes, while not driving through the fishermen's nets which are stretched across the channel.  This would be the first and last time we saw the mountains above Wrangell and Petersburg. 

Later that night the rain clouds would descend and would not leave for another week. 

We stayed in the  Petersburg marina for 3 days while we waited for a storm to pass over.  The storm never showed up, which could lead us into a whole chapter on how not to let the VHF weather forecast freak you out unnecesarily. 

The marina was easily the most modern and economical marina we stayed in during our entire trip.  We would highly recommend others to plan on staying here and bypassing Wrangell, Alaska.  The two towns look close on the map, but you are unable to navigate through the little water connection between the two towns.  As a result you have to go through the Wrangell Narrows.  This requires careful timing of the tides and currents. 

If you time it correctly you will ride a late flood current 2/3 of the way through and then have the ebb current pull you the rest of the way through.  If doing it again I would enter the narrow with two hours left to go in the flood.  You should be able to do 8 knots with the current.

A great day for a sail! Just inside the US border.

Robert's First Birthday, Continued.

Eating of the birthday cake was delayed due to weather. We finally ate the crooked cake on July 19. (It was crooked because it was baking while the boat was heeled over. Oops!)  Robert ate some but was not wild about it.  Most memorable was that he was terrified by the hats.  It was not until everyone else donned theirs that he was willing to touch it.  He never did wear a hat.

Misty Fiords National Park

Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we were not able to venture far into the Misty Fiords National Monument, but the small amount that we did see was beautiful.

An uncharted rock, which at a higher tide, when we accidentally discovered it, was underwater. Mark slowed down just before hitting it.

Amy and Kay ready to set anchor in Misty Fiords National Monument after a long day.  This is the last night Kay spent on the boat.  She requested a perfect sunset and sunrise, and we got both.